


Twisted

by NiteFang



Category: Glee
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Disney, F/M, Humor, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-05-22
Updated: 2012-06-12
Packaged: 2017-11-07 11:16:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/430502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NiteFang/pseuds/NiteFang
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She knew stars. Stars were her thing. The lights that floated across the sky once a year? Not stars. And while the man with the beautiful hazel eyes was a scoundrel, he was most definitely not a monster.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Juniper

**Juniper  
 _Safekeeping_**

“Blaine, Brit, thank you _so_ much for doing this,” Rachel said earnestly, setting three year-old Caroline on the couch with her stuffed monkeys. “I know this is last minute, and I usually organize babysitting jobs much earlier so people can have sufficient time to mentally and physically prepare themselves for—”

“Rach, calm down,” Blaine said reassuringly, dragging eight year-old Jonny off the counter where he’d been trying to scale the refrigerator. “Everything will be—”

Rachel spun and shot Blaine a wide-eyed, exasperated glare. “This is your first time watching my children, Blaine. Isn’t it?”

Blaine shrugged and nudged Jonny in the butt with his foot, pushing the boy toward the living room. “Well, yeah, but how hard—”

Puck chose the perfect time to walk out of the boys’ bedroom, carrying six year-old Isaiah.

“—don’t play with the blender either,” he ordered his dutifully-nodding second-eldest child. “ _And_ the toilet, the toaster, the outlets, the fire alarms, the oven, the locks on the doors, the—you know what, bud? Just stay away from everything electronic or metal unless Uncle Blaine and Aunt Brit say otherwise, _capisce_?”

Isaiah nodded again, and Puck set him down on the couch next to his sister. As soon as the little boy got himself settled, Puck rounded on Blaine and Brittany. He pulled a folded-up paper out of his pocket and shoved it into Blaine’s hand and whispered, “Here is a list of things they _cannot_ touch under _any_ circumstances. Do _not_ let them get a hold of this list either. They’ll erase some stuff, white it out, burn this thing, or whatever, and then you’re just shit outta luck. Keep it secret, keep it safe.”

Brittany nodded conspiratorially and saluted as Blaine glanced over the list worriedly, glancing up just as Puck walked away to help Rachel with her coat.

“Caroline’s not too much to worry about,” Rachel said, “but as much as I want to compare my sons’ dynamic to Superman and Batman…unfortunately, they’re more like Michael and Fredo Corleone.”

“From _The Godfather_?!” Blaine cried incredulously.

“ _Two_!” Brittany added cheerily.

Blaine swallowed and nodded confidently. “We’ll be fine. We’ll be fine,” he reassured the room. Well, he was mostly reassuring himself, but that didn’t need to be said aloud.

“For your sakes,” Puck said, following Rachel out the door, “I hope so. Bye.”

Blaine was truthful enough to admit that the sound of the door slamming was much too ominous than he’d care for, but he would never own up to almost shitting his pants when he turned and saw Jonny and Isaiah smiling innocently at him from the living room. Caroline was just off in her own little world, not caring about her brothers’ shenanigans unless it was directly affecting her. She would definitely be of no help tonight.

“Now, guys, don’t start acting out with me, okay?” Blaine said firmly. “You and I are cool when Uncle Kurt and I come over for dinner, so be cool with me and Aunt Brit now.”

“Blaine?”

“Yeah, Brit?”

“They’re little Puckzillas with a strong streak of Berry, and without Puckleberry itself to reel them in the way only Puckleberry can, we’re pretty much screwed,” Brittany pointed out matter-of-factly as she started spooning the kids’ dinner out on plates. “Even Kurtsy and San can barely survive when they babysit the Pucklebabies.”

“Thanks _so_ much for the vote of confidence, Brittany.”

“But we can totally do it ‘cause I’m whimsical.”

Blaine glanced at her, and when he saw that she was completely serious, he turned back to the Pucklebabies, who just shrugged in reply.

“ _Whimsical_?” he echoed.

“Yeah, that’s why I’m the linchpin for this entire group—why we’ve all stayed together for so long,” she explained. “Everyone’s too dramatic and apathetic and diabetic, but I bring the whimsy.”

Blaine decided against reminding her of her senior year defection to the Trouble Tones that completely nullified her alleged standing as the glee club linchpin. He just sighed as Jonny suddenly exploded off the couch and bounded into his room. This was gonna be one fucking _long_ night.

**~oOo~**

Santana and Bekah were both working on a big case, Kurt was off at a fashion show, Mercedes was in LA, Mike and Tina’s son Jason had bronchitis, Matt was visiting his family in Houston, Beth and Shelby were at a dance recital, Rory was in Ireland with his in-laws, Finn had a broken leg, the grandparents were in Lima, Quinn was filming, Sugar was on her anniversary date, and Rachel, Puck, and Sam had one final rehearsal before the affectionately-but-not-actually-named “Gleek Play” would premiere—Sam as the writer of the play itself, Rachel as the villainess, and Puck as the score composer (after taking a small break from the music industry as a favor to both his wife and best friend.)

So _no one else_ could watch the Pucklebabies because the regular babysitter had the flu, therefore Blaine and Brittany volunteered—mostly because their significant others failed to relay their experiences because they’d been too traumatized.

So needless to say, dinner was less of a _catastrophe_ and more like a complete _shitstorm._ For the near future, Blaine would be staying far away from chicken fingers and plastic dinnerware and Brittany would be having nightmares about dancing broccoli. Getting the Pucklebabies wound down for bed was like an Olympic event, and even Brittany was exhausted by the end of it all. By the time the boys were laid out on Caroline’s bed while the littlest Puckerman demanded a bedtime story, the aunt and uncle were bedraggled, burned, and bordering on a mini-psychotic breakdown.

And yet their plight was still far from over.

The boys hadn’t disputed Caroline’s demand of a live-action version of _Tangled_ —complete with horse and chameleon pantomiming and full songs. The storytelling itself was the only part of the night that went smoothly. The hitch came after Caroline finally fell asleep, and Brittany and Blaine collapsed on the living room set, bypassing naps and going straight for their REM cycles. They would most definitely be staying the night.

Brittany threw her legs over the arm of the couch she’d commandeered for herself and pressed a pillow over her head while Blaine dropped face-first on the loveseat, one arm and leg hanging over the edge. Firm, cold leather had never felt so delicious to either of them. Well…except for Brittany, but that’s a story for an entirely different genre.

“Blainey, shut the lights?” Brittany pleaded.

Blaine groaned and was about to push himself up off the couch when a solid poke in the cheek made him shoot upright with an embarrassing squeak. Jonny and Isaiah stood side-by-side, staring down at him with identical irritated expressions. In spite of Rachel’s warning, it had been Isaiah who had been the calmest Pucklebaby—the angel compared to Jonny the Hell Spawn and Caroline the Diva—but even _he_ looked pissed.

“Now you gotta tell _us_ a story,” Jonny said menacingly.

“But I just did!” Blaine cried, his hands involuntarily going up in prayer position.

“No, you told _Caroline_ her princess story,” Jonny explained, crossing his arms over his chest. “Now you need to tell _us_ our badass story.”

“What?” Blaine whimpered.

“Mommy tells Caroline her story while Daddy tells us ours,” Isaiah said.

“But you’re big boys now. You don’t need me to—”

He didn’t even get to finish his sentence before a teddy bear whacked him right across the face and was replaced by Jonny’s enraged glare.

“Isaiah. Wants. A. Story,” he growled.

Yep, Jonny was going to be the new Puck. Definitely.

Blaine held up a nervous finger. “Hold on, okay? Just…o-one sec.”

He threw a pillow at Brittany, motioned for her to follow him to the kitchen, and pulled out his cell phone. Puck answered on the first ring, probably because he’d kept the phone in his hand all night, expecting the worst.

“What’s on fire?!” Puck demanded worriedly over the speaker.

Blaine completely bypassed the question and went straight for the problem. “What the hell is this bedtime story thing?”

“Oh, shit,” Puck breathed.

“Oh, shit indeed. They want a badass story! What do I have to do—read them the screenplay for _Die Hard_?” Blaine demanded.

“What? No, Anderson, you numbskull. Look, my kids like sharing shit, okay? If one gets a story, they _all_ get a story, but if Caroline gets something girly, Jon and Isaiah want the same thing—only a badass version. You catch my drift?”

“Oh! They want a badass retelling of _Tangled_ then?” Brittany asked.

“What the hell?” Blaine hissed.

“Look, just…edit the story, okay? Add in some spies and voodoo and a hell of a lot more sword fighting and shit. Think _badass_ , okay? Make it less _Disney_ and more _Mission: Impossible_.”

“I swear to God, Puckerman, you need to wean your kids off that badass shit,” Blaine grumbled, rubbing his forehead as Brittany went off to make some coffee. He was getting seriously irritated with the word.

Puck just laughed. “Badass is in the genes, asshole. Suck it up and start exercising your imagination. They haven’t asked for a story in a couple weeks, so I hoped they wouldn’t ask for one tonight, but you’re just shit outta luck, bud.”

“Can you at least put Mr. Broadway Playwright on the line to give me some sort of plot skeleton to work with?” Blaine  pleaded.

“Leave Sam alone,” Puck sighed. “He’s getting pissed off with the director. Besides, the story’s already written, dumbass. Just add in a little extra shit and make it sound bad—”

“You say badass one more time, I’m gonna throw your guitar out the window.”

“You do that, Warbler, and I will order Jonny and Isaiah to light your hair on fire. It’ll only take one spark, and God knows my kids are more than capable of coming up with _fireworks_.”

“Guys, calm down,” Brittany cut them off suddenly, looking a lot more awake than before. Blaine saw the gleam in her eye and the excited twist in her smile and knew this night just got a lot longer than he’d initially anticipated. “I’ve got this.”

“Have fun, asshat,” Puck laughed evilly.

“Fuck you,” Blaine replied dryly, hanging up and then turning to Brittany, who handed him a tall mug of coffee. “What are you thinking now, Brit?”

She grinned and opened the cookie jar, dishing out a handful of cookies on a plate and then grabbing the milk out of the fridge. “We’re gonna tell them the _Tangled_ story again— _glee club_ - _style_.”

Blaine just blinked at her. He was never babysitting with this woman again. “ _What_?”

“We’ll replace the characters in the movie with people we know,” she explained, grinning widely. “Puck and Rachel will be Flynn Rider and Rapunzel.”

He blamed it on the fact that he was so sleepy because if he was in a normal state of mind, he would’ve never gone along with it. “What about the rest of the gleeks? There aren’t enough characters in the movie to accommodate everyone else, and they can’t _all_ be ruffians.”

“Well, we’ll add in extra characters,” she said, “like a king and queen from another kingdom who come to visit—and a knight too! A knight come to rescue the lost princess of Corona and win her hand in marriage. He’ll have help from his handman, of course.”

“Footman,” Blaine corrected her.

She waved her hand dismissively. “That doesn’t make sense; he can’t be a footstool riding a horse. This isn’t _Beauty and the Beast_. Anyway, a couple of the gleeks can still be ruffians, and we can use the two ogres with the eye patches and black leather too. Since this is a magic kingdom, we can throw in a voodoo priestess, and she can be one of the gleeks.”

“Voodoo priestess?! What?! Where is this coming from?!”

“And Maximus and Pascal can be gleeks too!”

“You have put _way_ too—” He froze and narrowed his eyes at the blonde. “You’ve thought about it before, haven’t you?”

“Of course. Puck and Rachel are perfect as Flynn and Rapunzel—though they’d be better as Beast and Belle, but I haven’t cast all the parts for that yet, so we can’t use it. Rachel sometimes sounds like she’s lived under a rock her whole life because she didn’t even know what sixty-nine was until her senior year at Juilliard, and Puck is just one guy, but he’s got two names—‘Puck’ and ‘Noah’—just like Flynn has ‘Flynn’ and ‘Eugene’ even though they’re the exact same guy with hardly a difference in personality. I totally thought about this when the movie first came out. You don’t put gleeks into Disney movies?”

“Uh, no.”

“You were depraved as a child, weren’t you?”

“ _Deprived_ , Brit.”

“Whatever.”

“What about you and me? What are we in the story?”

“We’re not part of the story, silly. We’re the ones telling it. How can we tell the story _and_ be a part of it? You can’t be in two places at once.”

He knew there had to be some sort of metaphor to what she was saying, but his brain wasn’t at a hundred percent, so he couldn’t really find it right then. He was still trying to find her train of thought when she started listing off the characters of the movie and corresponding them with gleeks. He finally gave up and tried to follow her list.

“And so what about the king and queen of Corona?” he blurted out.

“King Kurt and Queen Santana, of course,” she answered simply.

He blanched at the thought of… _Kurtana_. That…was not…a very peaceful pairing. “Brit, I think you took that a little too far,” Blaine muttered.

She shook her head furiously, her ponytail nearly whipping Blaine in the face. “No! We’re telling the story, and since Kurt is your king, and San is my queen, I think they should be king and queen of Corona too.”

When Blaine _still_ didn’t look convinced, Brittany sighed. “Rachel got her diva-ness from Kurt, but she gets her spunky-bitchy kind of attitude from San.”

Blaine thought about it for a second, still giving the blonde a skeptical look. It made sense, it really did—all of it, in fact. But he’d be lying if he didn’t admit that he was irrationally afraid of what else Brittany was going to come up with.

She clapped her hands and squeezed him excitedly. “This is gonna be so great! I’m gonna bring the whimsy to the story, and you can bring in the action and stuff since you’re the boy in yours and Kurt’s relationship.”

“Oh, my God.” He wanted to be enthusiastic about this. He really did.

“Come on! Jonny and Isaiah are gonna love this!”

“Oh, dear God.” But he just couldn’t bring himself to be excited.

Once they got back into the living room, the two boys were seated on the couch, arms crossed and faces stony—almost like critics. It was a little intimidating.

“Okay, we talked to your dad, so we kind of have a good idea of what to do,” Blaine said tentatively as he and Brittany set down the milk and cookies.

“You better,” Jonny said disdainfully. “Otherwise you’re gonna end up telling us a different story.”

 _Oh, Puckerman, you are going to_ die, Blaine thought darkly. Puck had definitely failed to mention that little detail.

But Brittany was totally unfazed by her less-than-enthusiastic audience. She just dimmed the lights of the living room, sat down on the ottoman next to Blaine, and grinned.

“Once upon a time, a single drop of sunlight fell from the heavens, and from this small drop of sun grew a magic golden flower,” she began, gesturing wildly. “It was soft and delicate, but even in the darkest of nights and the foggiest of days, it could glow—glow like a _bacon_.”

“ _Beacon_ ,” Blaine coughed. Then, figuring that Brittany was gonna run into more roadblocks that would definitely start earning grimaces from the boys, Blaine set a hand on her knee and picked up the story. “For centuries, this little flower sat hidden on the edge of a small plateau, while miles away, there flourished a kingdom named Corona. It was ruled by King Kurt and Queen Santana—a pair to be reckoned with but definitely beloved by the whole kingdom.”

With this new addition to the story, the boys’ impassive expressions softened into one of mild interest. Blaine took it as a sign that he was on the right track and continued.

“They were the driving force behind Corona’s prosperity. They were smart, decisive, determined, but they were also compassionate and kind. It had been an arranged marriage, of course—one neither of them agreed too. Prince Kurt was superficial, manipulative, and was very defensive. Princess Santana was abrasive, arrogant, and had scared off each and every suitor that ask to marry her. But their parents insisted, and in the end, they gave in. During the first days of their marriage, they were an explosive force. If they weren’t arguing, they were ignoring each other. But when they finally took the thrones and became king and queen, they managed to put aside their differences and work together. Their superficiality all but disappeared, their arrogance humbled into confidence, and they put their manipulative skills to good use and for the benefit of the kingdom.”

The boys were grinning at the image of their aunt and uncle, and Blaine couldn’t help but crack a smile himself. Kurt and Santana would always be an explosive force—not nearly as bad as Puck and Rachel had been, of course—but unlike Puckleberry, they would never be able to put their differences aside for too long.

“They even came to love each other,” Blaine continued, throwing a smirk at a grinning Brittany. “But when Queen Santana fell ill in the fourth month of her pregnancy, the entire kingdom was in a panic. She and the baby were running out of time, and that’s normally when people start looking for a miracle—or in this case, _a magic golden flower_ , the same flower that was hidden away by a man, Father Schue, who hoarded its healing power and used it to keep himself young for hundreds of years. And all he had to do was sing a special song.”

“If Uncle Will is singing, you can totally do it, dude,” Jonny said, urging his brother.

Isaiah grinned bashfully before sitting up and singing, _“Flower, gleam and glow, let your power shine. Make the clock reverse, bring back what once was mine—what once was mine.”_

Yep, Isaiah would be the singer. Definitely.

“But the search parties that King Kurt had sent out to find the flower succeeded—they found Father Schue’s hiding place and uprooted the flower. The palace healers made an elixir out of it, and the flower’s magic healed the queen. A healthy baby girl, a princess, was born with big, light brown eyes that glimmered like gold. To celebrate her birth, King Kurt and Queen Santana launched a flying lantern into the sky. And for that one moment, everything was perfect.”

“ _What_?! What about Rapunzel’s golden hair?!”

“Jonny, shut up!” Isaiah barked.

“And then that moment ended. When Father Schue heard about the baby’s magical golden eyes, he stole into her bedroom one night. Reaching a gnarled, wizened hand into her bassinet, he brushed the hair from the sleeping baby’s forehead and sang the song. Like a spark blooming into fire, the baby’s dark brown hair began to glow bright gold, and his old, wrinkly hand became smooth and young again. Thinking that he’d found a suitable substitute for the flower, Schue pulled out a pair of scissors and cut the baby’s glowing hair only to stumble back as the cut locks faded back into brown, having lost its magic completely. If he couldn’t have part of it, he would have to take _all_ of it.

“So he stole the baby right out of her crib. The kingdom searched and searched, but they could not find the princess. For deep within the forest, in a hidden tower, Schue raised the child as his own. Every night, he brushed the little princess’s hair as she sang the song, and every night every wrinkle on the man’s skin smoothed. Schue had found his new magic flower, but this time, he was determined to keep it hidden. The little girl, _Daddy’s little flower_ , was forbidden to ever go outside, constantly warned that the outside world was a dangerous place filled with horrible, selfish people. The tower was safe, and there she would remain.

“But the walls of that tower could not hide everything. Each year on her birthday, King Kurt and Queen Santana released thousands of lanterns into the sky, in hope that one day, their lost princess would return. And each year on her birthday, Rachel crept down the stairs of her bedroom, flung open the windows, and stared longingly up at the floating lights dancing across the sky, always wondering and wishing that they were for her.”


	2. Hawthorn

**Hawthorn  
 _Hope, Expectation_**

Velvety tendrils of silver fog drifted along the woods, gently swirling around the trees and enveloping the gnarled roots of massive trees and tender fronds sprouting from the cool grass. Clouds of mist rose from the mirrors of the dark gray ponds scattered across the forest floor. Hidden by enormous, ancient trees was a stone wall that bordered the southeastern corner of the woods. If it hadn’t been for the small films curling out from between and beneath the curtain of vines, no one would’ve ever known that there was something hidden behind vividly green network of shoots.

Dark gray vapor coated the floor of the stone tunnel until it finally opened into a small clearing, protected by sheer faces of rock. Small trees and bushes dotted the warm, homely landscape as a small stream twisted along the grass. Seated in the middle of the clearing was a tall, reddish-brown tower, its twisting spire barely peaking over the top of the rock. No stairs, no ladder, and no rope led up to the door for its sole purpose was to protect and hide the owner of the soft, lilting voice that drifted out into the morning air.

“You can’t do it,” the voice sang smugly. _“You cannot do it.”_

She stared, her chocolate eyes burning into his own reptilian mahogany. She absently twisted a lock of her hair; he uncurled and curled his tail.

“You can’t do it,” she whispered this time, narrowing her eyes to supplement her conspiratorial tone as she maintained her gaze.

He narrowed his eyes infinitesimally, but he miscalculated his control—

“HAH! You blinked! I win!” she exclaimed triumphantly, throwing her arms up in the air in victory. But when she spun back around to look at her friend, her arms dejectedly fell and her smile vanished. “I look stupid.”

The chameleon croaked, crawling up to the sill and sadly resting his head on the polished wood to longingly stare out the window. His normal vibrant green color dulled into a grayish hue.

“Oh, Michael, I’m sorry,” Rachel sighed, coming to sit on the sill beside him. “You know I have to stay up here, but you— _you_ can go out there, you know…i-if you want to. I wouldn’t ask you to just stay up here with me all the—”

The little reptile squeaked indignantly, interrupting her. He changed back to bright green and shuffled onto Rachel’s lap to nuzzle his head against her hand.

“We can think of other things to do, right?” she asked optimistically, smiling as widely as she could. “I mean, Daddy always manages to find things that need cleaning or mending. A-And you know how much he loves my desserts—pie especially! And he can never have too many candlesticks, you know? We could…paint the walls some more! We haven’t done the, um, _ceiling_.”

Michael looked up at her with the most withering stare a chameleon could ever possibly muster as he gestured around the room with his tail—at the spotless interior, the cookies, the pies, the freshly-made candlesticks, the thoroughly-painted walls, and the wooden beams of the ceilings that would be almost a waste to paint.

“Okay, we may or may not have done everything,” Rachel sighed in defeat. “But don’t you like it up here? It’s safe! No snakes or lions o-o-or _hooligans_ to try and attack us!”

Michael rolled his eyes in exasperation and hopped down from her dress to pad over to the small chest under the stairs. He crawled up and into the keyhole only to poke his head out expectantly. Rachel blanched, gasped, and then dashed over to the chest until she skidded to a halt and glared into the keyhole.

“Michael, you get out of there right now!” Rachel hissed. “You _know_ I’m not allowed.”

The chameleon glared at her for three more seconds before disappearing into the darkness of the chest.

“Get out!” Rachel commanded forcefully, rapping her fist on the top of the chest.

His long, curled tail immediately poked out, following by his rump, hind legs, torso, front legs, head, and—

Rachel managed to go as pale as a sheet. “Put it back. _Put it back_. _Put. It. Back!_ ”

Ignoring her, Michael heaved the tightly-rolled sheet music out of the keyhole and dragged it in front of Rachel. He looked up to attempt another staring match—a battle of the wills—but it wasn’t necessary. As soon as the yellow parchment touched her bare toes, she crumbled.

Collapsing onto her knees, she gingerly picked up the roll of paper and lovingly spread it out against the wooden floor. Her eyes watered as she followed the flow of notes across the staffs, pushing her father’s warnings out of her mind. He’d taught her the most basic musical skills when she was little—back before he’d realized the affinity for music his daughter had and subsequently banned it from her altogether. She wasn’t allowed to sing, and she wasn’t allowed to play his guitar. That didn’t stop her, though. For years after that, she would wait until he left the tower to pick the lock on his chest and teach herself as much music as she could until he returned.

Unfortunately she’d done it for so long that she had gotten complacent. She’d absently began to hum one of his songs as they cooked supper one night, and her father had immediately caught on. It had been the biggest fight they’d ever had, and he’d made her promise to never, _ever_ go through his chest again. His open threat was more than enough to keep her scared from even stepping into a one-foot radius of the rickety old thing.

She’d never understood why he hated it when she sang—after all, he’d make her sing every night in front of the fireplace as he brushed her hair. But aside from that one song—that _lullaby_ —no other musical note was allowed to pass her lips.

_And she hated it._

She loved her father, but she absolutely resented his illogical, irrational need to silence her. It made no sense whatsoever. She glared at the sheet music in front of her before snatching it up and rushing back toward the chest. She picked the lock with the small pin she used to keep back a particularly rebellious lock of hair, flung open the lid, rolled up the sheet again, stuffed it in with the others, and then slammed the chest shut. Michael stared up at her worriedly as she pulled herself up to her feet and narrowed her eyes at the room around her.

“Is this how I’m going to spend the rest of my life?” she demanded. “Locked up in this tower with the same routine _every single day_?! I feel like a _bird_ , Michael—a-a-a caged bird who’s banned from its own flight and its own _song_! This—this isn’t how _anyone_ is supposed to live! I’m almost eighteen years old! I have to get out of here sometime!”

Michael nodded emphatically, knowing full well how composed Rachel had always been. A fire had been started. She was going to let it burn, and he was going to encourage it as much as possible.

“He keeps telling me that he’s preparing me to grow up and become the best person I can possibly be, but how can I learn _anything_ when my parameters of the world only have a-a diameter of a hundred feet?!” she ranted furiously, whirling around the room and throwing her hands up in the air. “I can’t _live_ like this!”

She flung her arm out and accidentally knocked down the old broom from where she’d leaned it against the corner. Michael watched in a mixture of trepidation and interest as she glared down at the broom before snapping down and snatching it up in a white-knuckled grip.

 _“Seven AM the usual morning lineup,”_ she sang mockingly, her voice strong and clear as a bell while she viciously pantomimed sweeping the floor. _“Start on the chores and sweep ‘til the floor’s all clean. Polish and wax, do laundry, mop, and shine-up. Sweep again and by then, it’s like seven-fifteen!”_

Michael gracefully leapt up onto the couch to avoid the violent sweeps of the broom across the spotless floor. He stifled the croak of indignation at nearly being swept into the wall, but he was beginning to enjoy this girl’s rant. And, boy, she was _off_.

 _“And so I’ll read a book or maybe two or three,”_ she continued, using the tip of the handle of the broom to point to the alphabetized bookshelf. _“I’ll add a few new paintings to my gallery. I’ll sort my paints and knit and cook and basically just wonder when will my life begin.”_

Michael grinned up at her as she spun around the room. With every swish and swoop of her legs and arms, his color brightened to a violent, excited emerald. He darted off the couch, following the rhythmic swishes of the broom against the wooden floor and began weaving around the broom and Rachel’s gliding feet. His tail curled and unfurled as he slithered around her, mimicking the pattern of her footsteps to keep in time.

Her voice got louder with every word, dripping bitterness and sarcasm while she mimed every action she sang about. _“Then after lunch, it’s puzzles and darts and baking, paper mâché, a bit of ballet, and chess, pottery and ventriloquy, candle-making. Then I’ll stretch, maybe sketch, take a climb, sew a dress!”_

Michael looked up and grinned, but his smile vanished as Rachel suddenly spun, lifted him off the floor, and then tossed him into the air before deftly catching him again. He blinked dazedly in spite of his excited smile, but as soon as her tone transformed from mocking to painfully cheerful, his face fell.

 _“And I'll reread the books if I have time to spare. I’ll paint the walls some more—I’m sure there’s room somewhere. And then I’ll brush and brush and brush and_ brush my hair _—stuck in the same place I’ve always been. And I’ll keep wonderin’ and wonderin’ and wonderin’ and wonderin,’”_ she sang, her voice cracking out of its maniacal tone when she wrenched aside a pair of curtains to reveal a hidden portion of the wall above the fireplace, _“When will my life begin?”_

When she finally stopped and stared up at the mural she’d painted a few months ago, her chest heaving from exertion, Michael sighed sadly and crawled up her dress to sit on her shoulder as she sang softly, _“And tomorrow night, the lights will appear just like they do on my birthday each year. What is it like out there where they glow? Now that I’m older, Father might just let me go...”_

Michael squeaked at her quietly, torn between enjoying her voice and feeling sad at what she was singing about. She turned and forced out as much of a reassuring smile as she could—which didn’t turn out to be much at all. Then she sighed and wearily began picking up the broom and the books she’d tossed around.

“Rachel!”

She froze where she was bent over, halfway to picking up the dictionary that had slid under the table.

“ _Rachel!_ Let down your hair!”

Fear and panic turned her fingertips into ice and made the blood rush up around the edges of her face. Michael had to poke her in the neck to snap her out of her haze. She set the broom against the corner again and then dashed out to the door, wrenched it open, and chucked out about sixty feet of her hair over the bar. Eight pounds of silky brunette hair shot down toward the ground, and a hand slipped out from underneath the dark cloak that stood at the base of the tower. It wrapped a fist and a leg around her hair securely. Rachel gripped her hair tight and heaved, pulling her father all the way up to the ledge.

When he reached solid footing and disentangled himself from her hair, he pulled back his hood, ran his hands through his curly brown hair, and then grinned at Rachel. “Hi, flower.”

“Hi, Daddy,” she answered, hauling back the rest of her hair and shutting the door. “How was your trip?”

“Oh, it was nothing new. What about you? What have you been doing?” he asked disinterestedly as he crossed the room, his boots clicking sharply on the tile. He pulled his cloak off and hung it in the wardrobe before turning to the mirror next to it.

“Just the same as always,” Rachel answered, fiddling with her fingers. “Made some candlesticks, dusted the rafters, baked a pie or two…” _…died a little more inside…_

He frowned and rubbed the skin on the backs of his hands. “Is that all?”

“Well, I swept, read some more of your old books, and I’m almost done making myself a new dress with that green fabric you brought me last week,” Rachel added dutifully. “But enough about me. What happened on your trip? Did you meet with—”

One thing Rachel always hated and admired about her father? His bluntness.

“I’m very disappointed in you, Rachel,” he said sadly, turning her face as he crossed his arms over his chest.

“Dad—?”

He cut her off with his index finger in the air. “You know what you did—I could hear you from across the clearing and even from outside the vines! Rachel, do you have any idea what you were risking—how _dangerous_ that was?!”

“Daddy, you’re the one who told me no one but _you_ comes anywhere near this side of the forest because of all the folk legends!” Rachel argued, throwing her arms out to the side. “You said we were _safe_ here!”

“But you keep compromising the shelter I made for you here by singing! Rachel, I’m _so_ proud that your projection has improved so much, but it’ll end up being our downfall! Someone will _hear_ you!” Schue insisted earnestly.

“Then what is the _point_?!” she finally demanded, her voice rising to dangerous levels and making Schue’s face grow paler and paler. “Why do you have me sing _at all_?! Why did you ban me from every other song except _that_ one?!”

“Because it’s a _lullaby_! It’s supposed to be soft! What you’re singing—while beautiful and talented—is _too much_!” Schue shot back.

“But the last time I _hummed_ , you yelled at me! Daddy, you keep giving me a double standard!” she cried.

Schue growled in frustration and ran his hands through his hair. “It’s to protect you!”

“From _what_?!” she snapped, her hands out and open pleadingly. “You have me read books to educate myself, but I don’t see the point! You’re trying to train me to be part of society and to have good manners and a-a-and a _civilized conduct_ , but you never let me out of the tower to use any of that! And you tell me that there are bad people out there, but then you throw these books at me about heroes and people who are kind and compassionate and loyal!”

“I raised you to be a _lady_ because confined to a tower or not, my daughter will not be some _barbarian_! And in case you forgot, every one of those books has a villain—someone who steals, lies, and _kills_! There are _monsters_ out there—people who will use you, abuse you, hurt you, and toss you aside like you’re not even worth _anything_! Those are the real people, Rachel! The books I gave you are _fictional_! No one is that good, that pure, or that heroic! People are selfish and mean and cruel! I’m trying to protect you!”

“Then stop _building me up_ to _tear me down_!” Rachel finally shrieked decisively.

The two of them stared at each other, eyes bright and chests heaving in anger. However, it was Schue who relaxed first—just like Rachel anticipated.

He stepped forward, set his hands on her shoulders, and pulled her into a tight hug.

“I only want what’s best for you, but you _know_ how hard it is for me to let go,” he muttered into her hair. “I want you to be the best you can be, but that’s always conflicting with how much I want to protect you. There are _bad_ people out there, honey. _Trust me_. And the last thing I want in the world is to lose you to them. I _wish_ I could let you sing as loudly and as often as you want. I _wish_ you could be able to go out into towns and see all the different cultures and people. I _wish_ you could be able to experience the full spectrum of life, but I don’t know if I can risk you experiencing the _dark_ aspects in my attempts to expose you to the light. Look at it from my perspective, sweetheart. Can you blame me?”

Rachel sighed and willed away the sting of tears before slowly wrapping her arms around her father’s waist. She buried her face into his soft cotton vest and nodded.

He kissed the top of her head and rubbed her back. “It’s hard being a dad to someone so special, you know.”

“I understand,” she relented quietly.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Michael perched on the coffee table, staring up at the two of them disappointedly. She know how much he wanted her to get out, but her father was right and she couldn’t blame the man for wanting to protect her. He’d lost enough in his life, and she knew he only held on to her as tightly as he did because he couldn’t afford to lose any more. She really _did_ understand, but most of all, she trusted him.

He knew best.

**~oOo~**

He didn’t get it. He just didn’t _get it_. He could not grasp the concept—it was virtually _impossible_ to wrap his head around it. Just… _how?_

 _How_ in the name of all that was good and holy in the tri-kingdom area could these two numbskulls manage to climb to the top of the most-wanted list when they couldn’t even utilize those gigantic muscles to _climb up a roof_?

“You’re the one who forced me into this, and now you’re the ones who’re gonna end up getting yourselves caught,” Puck said impatiently, picking off dirt from under his fingernails and ignoring the grunts and groans of effort sounding from the ledge two feet from where he stood.

“You’d be going down with us, Puck,” Dave Stabbington growled, sweat dripping from underneath his eye patch.

Puck scoffed. “I’m a _shadow_ ; I can’t be caught.”

“Would you just help us up?!” the younger Stabbington with the ugly red-haired mullet gasped from where he was slipping and sliding off the shingles.

“I don’t know, _Dick_ ,” Puck answered contemplatively, as if the question hadn’t been rhetorical. “Letting you two nitwits fall would solve all my problems.”

“My name is _Rick_!” Dick protested, his face getting redder and redder.

Puck rolled his eyes. “Your name’s Richard, right?”

“Ye—”

“So you can be ‘Dick” too—it’s a lot more fitting anyway,” Puck countered as he reached down and grabbed both brothers by the collars of their shirts and heaved them up. “Now move it and try not to trip and fall again.”

In comparison to the Stabbington Brothers’ clunky footsteps, Puck was able to deftly maneuver across the roof of the castle, sidling along the decorative archways and nimbly jumping from the parapet and down to the edge of the glass skylight above the throne room. He crouched down on the edge and waited for his two “employers” who seemed less inclined to do this job than him.

The heavy footsteps behind him suddenly paused, and Puck heard some furious whispering before Dave appeared and nearly crashed to the glass before Puck managed to yank him aside with a growl.

“Where’s your uglier half?” Puck hissed.

Dave glowered at him and shifted his eyes down through the skylight. “Don’t worry about it.”

Puck’s lip curled into a sneer. “This is a three-man job. If you were less of an idiot and more of a vicious Viking brute, then _sure_ , you and I could pull this off. But you _suck_. We need that idiot brother of yours, otherwise we’re _screwed_ over by Dick himself.”

“His name is _Rick_!”

Puck snorted. “Not for long. Now get the rope. We have a job to fail.”

Dave glared at him for a second longer before reaching into his pack and pulling out a rolled-up length of rope. Puck impatiently snatched it out of his hands and expertly tied one end to the nearby support column and the other end around his torso. He leaned over the skylight to check if anyone was watching, and when he was satisfied that the guards were facing the other way, he quietly pulled back the hatch and sat down on the edge to dangle his legs inside.

“Drop me and die,” Puck growled in a low whisper as Dave secured the rope around his hands and braced his feet.

Puck’s gaze when back down into the silent throne room. His eyes zeroed in on the tiara that sat on the pedestal right below him. The castle’s security was either absolute _shit_ or deviously ingenious in its concealment because it was almost _painful_ how easy it was to get in. But easy or not, his hear still skipped a beat when he dropped from the ledge and balanced his weight on the rope. He could hear the dimwit groaning and gasping above. This was why he insisted on _both_ Stabbingtons holding him. He was lean but _all_ muscle, and muscle is _heavy_. Coupled with the fact that neither of the two numbnuts could support their own weight judging by the dismal display of strength earlier, this was just gonna _suck_.

Dave eventually steadied Puck and started giving some slack. Puck began a slow and steady descent toward the lost princess’s crown. The security on the crown itself was just a small glass box—easy to lift and replace on the wooden pedestal. No lock, no key, no chain— _no brains_.

But what _should have been_ an easy lift turned into a whole shitfest because Dave lost his grip and Puck crashed down onto the pedestal. He was nearly fatally impaled on shards of glass, splinters of wood, and the huge, pointy diamond on the crown itself.

There was a second’s pause as Puck gasped in shock and thanked the human physiology, biology, anatomy— _whatever—_ for that brief spurt of anesthetic adrenaline that spared him from the obscene amount of pain this was gonna cause him in a couple of minutes. The scarlet and ivory-themed room swirled dangerously like the vanilla and cherry pudding from the dessert shoppe on the south side of the capital island. Puck struggled to sit up and managed it right when Dave swore as all the guards twisted and stared at the man who’d literally just fallen from the sky.

Then all hell broke loose.

“GRAB HIM!” one of the men shrieked on an unholy octave, prompting the red-coated guards to surge forward with their swords drawn.

Puck hauled himself up, wincing at the sight of all the glass and wood shards sticking out of his front. He hoped all the red on his shirt was from scratches, not legitimate, problematic, and potentially-fatal stab wounds he just wasn’t aware of yet. Escaping the castle only to collapse from blood loss wasn’t his idea of a successful job.

He sighed as he realized Dave was in no way capable of hauling him back up, so he was gonna have to do this the hard, painful, and stressful way.

If only he’d bet on the complete failure of this stunt. He would’ve cashed in a lot of gold.

Gritting his teeth, he simultaneously snatched up the crown and used a shard of glass to slash himself free of the ropes. He ducked, dodged, and blitzed his way through the attacking guards in a series of maneuvers that had him smirking smugly. He agilely rolled away from a particularly nasty-looking sword swipe and spun around to face a stained glass window—one he seriously considered crashing through.

Up until he realized that it was basically suicide. Unfortunately, he came to that obvious conclusion at the same time that Dave “The Moron” Stabbington decided that Puck’s life wasn’t hard enough and went ahead and ripped off the skylight hatch, threw it down to the clump of guards about to slash at Puck, and dropped into the room himself.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” Puck thundered furiously, leaping away from guard’s sword and kicking it out of the man’s hands to send it somersaulting in the air.

He clamped the less-bejeweled section of the crown between his teeth and caught the sword just in time. However, instead of fighting with the guard, Puck turned and drove the blade deep into the wooden table nearby. He then twisted away from another guard’s vicious swipe and reached over to grip the hilt of the sword and yank it right out of the other man’s hands.

Dave, however, pulled a fist back and punched a guard in the face, swiftly twisting away from a second guard, and then snatching the man’s sword away to cut down a third.

“HEY!” Puck roared, throwing the sword across the room and unclenching his teeth around the crown to drop it into his hand. “WE AGREED NO ONE WAS GONNA GET—”

“TO HELL WITH THE AGREEMENT!” Dave roared. “GET US OUTTA HERE!”

Squeezing the crown so hard that he was a little worried about the integrity of the metal, Puck sent up a series of apologies to the king and queen—thief or not, he was still a loyal citizen of Corona whose circumstances you can’t even _begin_ to imagine—and then called up what he could remember of the castle blueprints. The profanities dribbling out of his lips began to grow more and more obscene as he recounted how many doors, halls, and _extremely_ tight spots they were gonna have to squeeze through to escape.

Shockingly, Dave was working through the small group of guards at a rate that seriously belied his previous performances, and Puck’s doubts and suspicions mounted.

“PUCK!” Dave cried, dropping the last guard just as the double doors of the room practically exploded open.

A pair of smooth, shiny black boots gleamed in the morning light that shimmered in through the stained glass windows as they stepped into the room, crunching on the broken wood and glass. The tall, statuesque blonde _nightmare_ attached to the boots, on the other hand, caused Puck to freeze. Cold black eyes latched onto Puck’s face before straying downward to the crown in his hand.

 _Damn_.

“It’s Sylvester!” Puck hissed, grabbing Dave by the shirt and dragging him out the back door of the throne room.

“GO AHEAD AND RUN ‘TIL YOUR FEET SHRIVEL!” Sue Sylvester bellowed, her voice bouncing off the walls and chasing Puck and Dave as they hurtled down the corridor. “I WILL CATCH YOU AND ROAST YOUR—”

“I’m gonna kill you,” Puck growled between pants as he led Dave past the fourth floor ballroom. “And then I’m gonna resurrect you and drop you on Sylvester’s doorstep so she can feed you to those psychotic gorillas she’s rumored to have as pets.”

“Just shut up and get us out of—” Dave stopped short as they spotted a squadron of guards rounding the corning and heading straight for them.

“And as soon as you’re six feet underground, I’m gonna find a way to torture your ghost,” Puck snarled through his teeth. Then he tucked the crown into his leather vest, taking note of the fact that the pain _still_ hadn’t registered.

He was just gonna have to take advantage of that then, huh?

Throwing another withering scowl at his _employer_ , Puck broke into a full sprint, leaped onto the hall table, and vaulted over the heads of the oncoming guards. He narrowly missed the sword that had been thrust up at him in midair but still managed to neatly land in a crouch on the other side of the red coats. Puck let himself smirk again before dashing off.

That’s what the idiot gets for—

Puck froze in place as Dave tucked his shoulder in and _bull-rushed_ the guards, knocking them into the walls and _mauling_ them over.

He didn’t know whether to be impressed, intimidated, or even _more_ suspicious.

Puck grimaced but turned and kept going only to crash into _Dick,_ who’d shot out of an adjacent room, too busy stuffing something into the leather bag on his shoulder to watch where the hell he was going.

“DICK, YOU MORON!” Puck roared, very aware of the fact that he _just_ got stabbed by the crown against his chest _again_. He heaved the redhead off his chest and shoved him onto his feet.

“MY NAME IS _RICK_ , YOU—”

“I will call you _Guillermo_ if I want!” Puck barked, pushing the younger Stabbington down the hall. “Just _MOVE_!”

“Hand me the crown!” Dick ordered.

Puck glared at him in disbelief, but the other man wasn’t budging.

“I have the bag, you moron!” Dick cried, pointing at the leather satchel hanging across his chest.

Puck just shook his head, delved into his vest, and threw the crown at the redhead, _desperately_ hoping he’d manage to escape by himself and leave these two to be incarcerated. He watched as Dick shoved the crown into the bag and narrowed his eyes at what _else_ could be in there. He would be _damned_ if he was going to get arrested for stealing something aside from the intended target, and by the looks of these… _shenanigans_ , these two blockheads had some sort of hidden agenda.

“Where’s the exit?!” Dave hollered, catching up to them.

Puck smirked evilly as they ran. “Just _follow me_.”

They thundered down the hall, twisted around the corner, and shot through a wide, open sitting room practically _filled_ with servants who all stopped their cleaning to swivel and stare at the intruders in shock. Puck’s eyes focused straight ahead, past two blonde maids he wished he’d had the time to seduce, at the wide, clear window on the other side of the room.

“There’s no way out!” Dick bellowed frantically, needlessly picking up a chair and whacking a retreating manservant in the face.

But Dave apparently wasn’t that much of a nitwit because he immediately figured it out. “Puck, _Puck_ , PUCK—”

Puck ignored them as he drove his legs faster, showing no signs of stopping as he pelted across the plush, carpeted room, heading straight for the window. He threw one last-minute wink at the blonde on the right before leaping forward, covering his face with his arm, and crashing through the glass. He soared through the air for three seconds before landing on one of the shorter tower’s roof fifteen feet from the window.

“Come on, numbskulls!” he crowed, pointing at the guards that were about to rush up behind them. “Start running!”

The two Stabbingtons glanced at each other before Dick dropped the broken chair and they both broke into a full sprint, leaping out of the window one at a time. And Puck immediately knew there was a lot more going on than he realized because they gracefully landed beside him on the roof and motioned for him to keep leading the way.

Scowling, Puck skirted around to the other side of the sloped roof and began hopping and leaping from tower to tower, progressively getting closer to the ground and constantly shooting surreptitious glances at the two that were trailing behind him and expertly following his footsteps.

He needed to find out what else was in that bag.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really hope y'all are liking this so far. It will follow in the footsteps of the original Tangled, but of course, I will change things so you're not sitting there bored out of your minds because you already know what's gonna happen. 'Cause you don't.  
> Oh, buddy, you really don't.  
> Anyway, I'll be updating this every Tuesday, so you can expect the next chapter to be posted then. I'm not entirely sure what the average update times are, so I'm just gonna go with once a week since these chapters are pretty long to begin with. Not to mention the obscene amount of revisions and proofing I have to do. Bleh.  
> Okay, so who else is still emotional over the little (but HUGE) Puckleberry moment during the finale? Oh, my God, I died. Like...the flash of the screen in the darkness of my bedroom was like the _Avada Kedavra ___that had me spread-eagle on the floor. Every time I see it, I still get a little watery-eyed because HE SAID I LOVE YOU. Granted, it may or may not have been a sort of " _we ___love you" in reference to himself and the rest of the gleeks, but fuck that noise. He told her he loved her. But once again, fucking Finn was standing in the way of their love. Literally. But honestly, I was kind of proud of Finn in that he let Rachel go like that. I guess he _finally ___grew up a little. I just wish Rachel had realized it herself instead.  
>  But either way, I feel like it's the end of the show, and now I can't stop listening to Taylor Swift's "Long Live." Go listen to it if you haven't. It fits perfectly with the glee club. The image I have in my mind is Brittany signaling to Puck to start the guitar intro and then launching into the first verse, Santana and Tina harmonizing with her. Then Puck, Sam, and Blaine pick it up for the second verse so that Brit, Rachel, and Quinn take up the chorus. AND NOW I'M EVEN MORE EMOTIONAL THAN I WAS BEFORE. GOOD GOD.


	3. Coriander

**Coriander  
 _Hidden Worth, Concealed Merit_**

The flurry of activity within the castle had somewhat lessened since the escape, but there was still a massive amount of movement up and down the halls. Guards were running around trying to catalogue any other valuables that may have been stolen or trying to find out how the thieves managed to break in to begin with. Servants were cleaning up shattered glass and splintered furniture. A glazier had already arrived to replace the broken windows. However, a hurricane still raged in one of the private rooms on the third floors.

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY ESCAPED?! WHAT IN THE HELL DID WE APPOINT YOU FOR?!”

“Darling—sweetheart, please calm down. The cavalry’s already been sent out to catch them, and—”

“DON’T TELL ME TO CALM DOWN! I’LL CALM DOWN WHEN THE HEADS OF THOSE THREE BONEHEADS ARE MOUNTED ON STAKES ON THE RAILING OF OUR BEDROOM BALCONY!”

“All right, that’s just revolting—not to mention the dark brown of dried blood and rotting flesh would clash horribly with the color scheme of the castle. We’ll move those decorations to the hill above the jail, okay?”

“SHUT UP, KURT!” Santana shrieked, her normally-immaculate ebony hair beginning to frizz as if her frustration was leaking out of her scalp. Her thick, loose curls flew again as she spun around to face the Head of the Guard. “SUE! Sue, you had _better_ find those cretins before I go out there myself and raise hell and heav—”

“With all due respect, Your Royal Shrill-ness,” Sue drawled, never falling out of the rigid, straight-backed posture she’d been instilled with ever since she was a month old, “the lost princess’s crown is the least of your worries.”

Kurt closed the gap between himself and his wife to pull her to the deep violet and gold chaise lounge before she could start throwing things around and wearing down the ornate rug of the study with her pacing again. Only when he had her still and quiet beside him did he turn back to Sue with a steely gaze. “What are spewing about now?”

Sue crossed the king and queen’s shared study and stopped at the wide, elaborately-carved mahogany desk. She reached out, picked up the royal seal, and held it out in front of the couple. “There is wax residue on this,” she answered, “and I know for a _fact_ that neither of you used it since it was cleaned last night. Unfortunately, the orangutan with a pageboy haircut was seen running out of this exact office.”

“The _Stabbingtons_ …are on the _loose_ …with _forged_ _documents_ with the _royal_ _seal_ ,” Santana said through her teeth, fists clenched around handfuls of her crimson gown.

Kurt tightened his hold around her waist before she could fly into another rage. She’d been prone to blacking out in fits of fury ever since…ever since what _should have been_ their missing daughter’s sixteenth birthday two years ago. The tolls of having lost their only child were wearing the both of them down, but Santana had taken it especially hard and it only seemed to get worse and worse. The daughter she’d dreamed of for years had slipped right through her fingers, and though she’d never said it out loud, Kurt knew that she blamed herself most of all. The sad truth was that they dueled for the role of the guilty party. Kurt had sworn to protect his family and his kingdom; he’d failed the first and was now afraid the second would fall as well—especially now with the rising threat of the Stabbingtons.

“What are your theories then?” Kurt asked stonily, crossing his leg over the other and leaning an elbow on his knee. “What could they possibly need Rachel’s crown _and_ forged documents for?”

Sue set the seal back on its place on the desk and clasped her hands behind her back. “They may be trying to avoid use of the black market by selling the crown to another kingdom using the forgeries to ensure legal transaction.”

“No, that would still raise flags everywhere,” Kurt muttered. “Some of these criminals are corrupt, not _stupid_. Especially not those Stabbingtons.

Santana shrugged out of Kurt’s grasp and reached into the hidden pocket of her dress for a handful of pins. Kurt winced as she wrapped her hair around her fist, held the coil against the back of her head, and began stabbing pins into the bun with her free hand.

“San—”

“ _Shut_!” she barked, not even having to complete the command.

Kurt sighed, stood, and returned to his seat behind the desk. He picked up the foot-long parchment listing the various indiscretions the Stabbington Brothers been implicated for. He sighed _again_ and pressed two fingers against his temple.

“What about the third?” he asked, setting the Stabbingtons’ record aside and pulling up a significantly shorter list. “What’s his name? _Puck_?”

“What the hell kind of name is that? I’d much rather call him Fu—”

“ _Okay_ , Santana,” Kurt interrupted quickly. Even after all these years, the woman could so easily throw off a lifetime of etiquette training. “Retract those talons for a second.”

“Well, that’s what he _will_ be as soon as I run him through with a few of my letter openers,” she grumbled as she glared out the window and jabbed another pin into place. _“Sucio ladrón.”_

“That’s exactly what he is,” Sue answered disdainfully, beginning to pace—or _march_ , more like—back and forth in front of Kurt’s desk, “a _dirty thief_. He’s a petty criminal who cheats people out of their money. There’s no solid evidence that he _steals_ because he always manages to get away with it—no evidence, no trace, _nothing_. I’m personally impressed with his reputation, actually—or lack thereof—but the fact of the matter is that he is _still_ just a low-level criminal. He’s never been rumored to steal something _nearly_ this big. Why would the Stabbingtons bring him into their little team?”

“You only _think_ he’s low-level,” Santana pointed out evenly, turning around to face the other two again, her hair in a harsh, tight bun—the deadly pins hidden deep in her hair. “He may have been pulling major heists right under our nose, but you just don’t have enough material to prove it.”

“What are you implying?” Sue asked, turning her nose up suspiciously.

Santana snorted with no grace whatsoever. “Aside from the fact that you make way too many assumptions? I’m implying that they needed this _Puck_ character to get into the castle. From what you and the reports have shown, he seems to be a sneaky enough bastard to get in undetected.”

“So what stopped him from getting out the same way?” Kurt asked, looking up from the parchment. “He wanted to put on a show for our benefit? Break some glass and scare some maids out of their dresses?”

“He’s known for being a lone wolf,” Sue answered, pulling her hands from behind her back and rubbing the knuckles of her right hand. “He doesn’t play well with others. A kid after my own heart, really. I should capture and brainwash him to make him my own little minio—”

Kurt scoffed. “Then so much for his stealthy reputation—if he was smart enough to have kept himself out of our guillotine, then she should’ve been able to factor in that extra baggage.”

“You’re giving him too much credit,” Sue snarled impatiently.

“And you’re both not giving enough credit to those two eye-patched gorillas,” Santana snapped.

Kurt frowned. “I think the more preferable comparison would be _baboons_ —”

Santana stalked forward, eyes narrowed in devious concentration. “What if—just _what if_ —this has nothing to do with the crown? What if they got Puck to help them get into the castle, but stealing the crown was just a diversion?”

Sue bolted out of the room, barking indistinct orders. Kurt’s eyes shot up to his wife, and his upper lip curled in horror and disgust.

Puck’s record slipped from between Kurt’s pale, frozen fingers. “The forgeries were the target.”

**~oOo~**

_Thisclose_. They had been _this-freaking-close_ to being in the homestretch. Usually Puck would stick to his guns and see it out through the end (not that he would get himself into anything harder than what he knew he was capable of anyway), but the temptation of just abandoning these two freaks was getting more and more shiny and ripe for the taking. The crown of the lost princess— _that he didn’t even want in the first place—_ was _not_ worth getting impaled to a tree by the arrows that had just whizzed past his ear.

The three of them had managed to navigate their way around the roofs, spires, balconies, and turrets to finally leap down onto their awaiting horses that had been hitched on the west side of the castle. They donned their meager disguises and simply trotted through the capital island only to be spotted not _five feet_ from the bridge because of the two pinheads’ _highly-distinguishable_ eye patches.

Seriously.

The old fart with the huge, orange, wide-brimmed hat had gone and _pointed and announced_ to the rest of the marina that those two big guys on the black horses looked like the Stabbington Brothers—“And look! They have the exact same eye patches in the same exact places!”

Now they were being chased through the forest, torn apart from all angles by the branches they were galloping through and narrowly missing being  speared by the arrows the Corona soldiers were firing at them. Which brought Puck back to the sad, _extremely_ disheartening fact that a whole damn _battalion_ of soldiers were tearing after them.

Puck bent closer to his horse, spurring the brown stallion faster. “We’re screwed,” he muttered in what he’d _thought_ was an almost-inaudible tone.

“SHUT UP!” Dick shrieked, stray leaves and twigs caught in his long-ass hair.

“We gotta lose ‘em!” Dave barked. “Puckerman, we gotta lose—”

“NO SHIT!” Puck shot back furiously, steering his horse through a narrow passage between two huge oaks.

The three of them weaved in between a huge, dense copse of trees, spurring their horses faster and faster as the pounding hoofbeats of the Corona cavalry drew closer and closer. The rush of trees around them only seemed to make the cavalry’s neighs and whinnies sound like banshees’ shrieks coming at them from all angles.

“This isn’t working!” Dick cried, quickly ducking to avoid a low bough. “They’re only getting closer!”

Puck growled in frustration and steered them out of the trees. He gripped the reins tighter, feeling his horse pant roughly. He felt every push and pull of her muscles, every even and steady breath she took. These were _his_ horses—raised and trained them himself. He knew what they were capable of. And in that knowledge did he take comfort and decide that _this_ would be their best chance of getting out of this shitstorm.

“Puck, Puck, _Puck_ , that is a _gorge_!” Dick screamed.

“Shut up!” Puck ordered, leaning even closer to his horse. “Come on, girl. Come on. You can do this. Those pussy Corona horses can’t do this. Come on, _come on_.”

She neighed in anticipation, and the other two horses echoed it. Unfortunately, the two dipshits astride the horses weren’t as eager to take that leap of faith.

Dick rode up to Puck and grabbed at his sleeve. “We’re gonna—” 

Puck wrenched out of his grip and glared. _“Ride the horse or get off.”_

Dave shook his head, sweat _cascading_ down from his forehead. “No. No, no, no, no. There’s gotta be another way.”

They were already quickly approaching the edge of the grass and the twenty-foot gap separating the east and south sides of the forest. The horses were ready, but the two weren’t. The cavalry suddenly exploded out of the forest, led by a captain atop a dappled white stallion.

“You’re just trying to get us killed!” Dick cried, still clutching onto his reins in spite of obviously not wanting to make the jump.

“THEN _JUMP OFF_!” Puck roared.

He pulled out the knife hidden in his sleeve, lunged forward, slashed the strap of the leather bag hanging across Dick’s chest, gripped it tight in his hand, and held onto the reins tightly as his horse galloped straight to the edge and leaped over. He barely registered the fact that the Stabbingtons had steered away at the last minute, splitting off in either direction.

The cavalry horses neighed and whinnied in protest and the soldiers bellowed out orders and shouts of anger, but all Puck could hear was the rush of air in his ears as he and the horse practically _flew_ across the gap. They thudded onto solid ground, kicking up dirt and grass, and right after Puck’s teeth slammed together painfully, he heard a second thud and glanced over his shoulder to see the captain and the white horse had made the jump too.

“Come on, Samson!” the captain barked, spurring the horse faster.

So it had a name, eh? Well, at least now he had something aside from “demon horse” to use. Not that he’d end up using the thing’s actual name anyway. Puck could almost see the anger in the horse’s black eyes as he thundered closer.

 _Well, shit_ , he thought.

He urged his own horse faster, tagging an apology at the end of his command—the poor animal.

If he could get out of this, he’d buy a whole damn bushel of apples, carrots, and sugar cubes.

Then their chances of getting out and getting that food was shot to hell when a loud whistling sounded from right behind him. He turned just in time to see a thick, braided cord of rope with metal balls attached at each end hurtle through the air and wrap around the legs of his horse.

Puck blinked. _“Fuck.”_

And then he was violently thrown off his saddle. He flew over the head of his horse, but fate decided his face was too handsome to be marred by the ground, so his hands immediately latched onto the vine hanging in front of him so that he was able to swing out of harm’s way. His momentum had him sailing all the way around the tree, but as soon as he saw the back of the captain and the demon horse’s rump, it hit him.

…or rather, _he_ hit the captain in the back of the head.

The captain somersaulted over the white horse’s head, who tried his best not to trample his rider. It was a futile effort though—especially considering how fast he’d been galloping. Puck was fairly sure the captain’s neck was broken.

Puck dropped to the ground, wrapped the broken straps of the leather bag tightly around his fist, and then sprinted in the opposite direction of the horse. For a brief few seconds, he thought he was free…

Until pounding hoofbeats had him throwing a glance over his shoulder to see the beast charging after him.

Weren’t these things supposed to just kind of stop the chase once the rider was unsaddled?

“You’re not a soldier, you know!” Puck called. “You can _stop_ now!”

The beast just neighed angrily in reply.

Puck turned back and ducked into a thicket—and the damned horse pelted right after him. Its teeth threateningly snapped a few inches from Puck’s ear at the same time the thief nearly tripped over a tree root that he’d been too distracted to notice. He stumbled and nearly smacked into a tree, but he changed direction at the last second and bought himself a few feet of distance between himself and the crazed beast, who skidded to an awkward stop and continued to tear after him.

“Come on!” Puck cried. “Aren’t you tired? I know I’m a delicious piece of ass, but I thought y’all were plant eaters or something!”

He leaped into a dense copse of trees, but the enraged whinny that blew hot air against the back of his neck proved that no amount of narrow spaces would stop this demonic horse.

Thankfully he was in familiar territory.

“Last chance to stop!” Puck called over his shoulder. “No? Okay, then. _Soar_ , Pegasus!”

He shot out of the trees just in time to launch himself into the air, reaching for the bough that jutted out over the cliff face. The horse neighed as it skidded to a stop and tried to keep itself from going over, but he slipped and slid off the edge with a pathetic whimper that had Puck grinning smugly. He could hear it practically _crying_ as it slid all the way down the steep, grassy slope.

He adjusted his grip on the coarse bark and swung a leg up to shimmy his way back to solid ground. He dropped down onto the soft grass and sighed in relief, leaning his back against the trunk and closing his eyes for a few seconds. Then he just went ahead and slid all the way to the ground and laid himself out on the grass.

He deserved a break.

His deep breaths were starting to make the shock wear off, and he was starting to _finally_ feel the sting and burn of glass and wood from earlier. On top of that, he was fucking _sore_. He just wanted to lie there and takesome time out of the stressful situation and just… _reflect_. It seemed like a prime opportunity for a healthy dose of retrospect, right? Right? Narrowly escape prison and/or death— _check_. Muddle through without any deaths on his hands— _check_. Deviously wheedle his way out of a potentially-treasonous deal— _check_. People did this kind of thing in these types of situations, right? After near-death, nerve-wracking shitstorms?

Oh, hell. He dug his fingers into the dirt, grimacing at the pain just _all over_.

 _He’d lived long enough,_ he decided.Did his crimes, exacted his vengeance upon the people who’d done him wrong, tasted the forbidden fruit, etc, etc…

He blinked up at the small fragments of blue that gleamed in between the canopy of trees and leaves and then let out a ragged breath.

Sadly and surprisingly, a scoundrel’s work was never done—at least for _this_ scoundrel.

He _felt_ the hoofbeats before he heard them.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered, freezing in place and digging his fingers deeper into the earth. _“Son—of—a—bitch.”_

A furious whinny signaled the damned horse’s imminent arrival.

“Can _nothing_ go right for me today?!” he demanded, glowering up at the branches.

Shots of adrenaline numbed the pain again as he scrambled up to his feet and leaned over the edge. Dirt-speckled, mud-caked, and with blades of grass tangled in his mane, the horse had managed to find a pathway back up the cliff and now looked _hell-bent_ on gnawing Puck’s head off his neck and using the rest of his body as a throw rug. It was one hell of a sight.

Puck grimaced and took off again. The intense roaring in his ears deafened the sounds around him as he just kept running and running _and running._

He was so out of it, in fact, that he completely missed the coiled python in the middle of his path, tripped, clipped a tree, and then tumbled out of the underbrush, rolled through a veil of vines, and collided against the rock wall of a hidden tunnel with a nice, bright, _secret_ light at the very end.

If he wasn’t so deeply enveloped in a haze of pain, he would’ve cried in relief. Wincing, he used the wall to help himself up, peering through the gaps of the vines to see that _goddamn horse_ canter past, head swiveling back and forth, searching for him.

Puck winced again as he turned and limped down the dark tunnel. He came out into a sunlit clearing and gawked in disbelief at the _fucking tower_ sitting in the middle of it all. Dark browns mixed with creams and soft greens made the tower less _creepy_ and more _homely_ , but the fact of the matter was there was still a _hidden, secret tower_.

No hitched horses at the bottom, no doors in the stone base…and an even pattern of spikes poking out of the stony column leading up to the main bulb of space at the top.

So Puck did what any other thief on the run would’ve done: he used the spikes to climb up.

It was probably the easiest thing he’d done all day. Except for the one accidental scratch he got from one of the spikes and the fact that he had to pull off some pretty kickass swinging maneuvers on the beams under the main portion of the tower to get all the way up to the front door, that was the least amount of stress he’d done so far.

Keywords: _so far_.

Because as soon as he swung open the door, the last thing he saw was the metallic bottom of a skillet slamming into his face.

This _really_ was not his day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And _now ___we're gonna get into the Puckleberry. Sorry it's taken this long, but I had to set up the story, you know?  
>  Thank you for everyone who's been reviewing and following and favorite-ing. It means a lot to me 'cause of the _stupidly obscene ___amount of time I put into planning this all out. Means a lot for you to take some time out and leave me comments and stuff. So thank you. =)  
>  So I've heard some extremely disturbing news about how Puck's little brother will be cast as a regular for season four. And all us loyal Puckleberrians (or fucking anyone who's watched the show since the beginning) know that Puck has a little _sister ___. I'm assuming she had a sex change operation somewhere between then and now? God knows I wouldn't put it past RIB to pull a stunt like that considering how stupid they think we are.  
>  I officially label Glee to be a live-action production of _horrible ___fan fiction.


	4. Aconite

**Aconite  
 _Misanthropy_**

Rachel didn’t mean to. She truly, honestly _did not mean to_.

All right, fine, she _meant_ to block the intruder from coming any further into her home—the intention was justified, of course. But the irreparable brain damage she most probably inflicted by whacking him in the face so hard she could _still_ feel the vibrations of the impact… Well, that was completely and totally an accident.

Honestly.

She just got a bit carried away, and it’s not as if she’d had any prior experience hitting people with kitchen utensils. She figured she had to put as much as she could into it because in cases like these, less was _not_ more.

She shook her head of her errant thoughts and gripped the handle of the skillet even tighter in her hands as she took a deep, steadying breath. She’d fixed her eyes on the point where his head had been—before she, you know, _broke it_. She closed her eyes tightly, bracing herself for the sight, and then _finally_ looked down.

And then she froze.

While she admired her father’s noble intentions by trying to scare the literal hell out of her with the horror stories he’d told her about monsters who’d defile every part of her, she’d known some it was true—that’s why she’d swung at this man with all of her might. But now that she was looking down at his face…

She supposed that she considered her father handsome. After all, she’d only had monsters and ugly brutes to compare him to. But this man…was like an entirely different species. He had these handsome, chiseled features no monster in any of her books had ever been drawn with. A strong, lined jaw framed plump pink lips that should’ve belonged on a woman’s face, but oddly and _disturbingly_ only made him more…handsome.

That’s what he was… _handsome_. Much more than her father—definitely.

He was big, though. He was _at least_ a head taller than her with broad shoulders, and well-muscled forearms revealed by the sleeves that had been pushed up to his elbows. A slightly bloody scratch he must’ve gotten earlier was still a bit fresh as it scored a line across the back of his left hand and ended with a two-inch scrap on the black leather cuff on his wrist. His fingers were long and calloused—by hard work, she supposed. Though whether “hard work” entailed farming for turnips or strangling children, she wasn’t sure.

He surely didn’t _look_ evil. In fact, he looked quite…injured. His gray shirt and black leather vest was splattered with what looked to be blood, sweat, mud, and grass stains. His face had multiple scratches, and there was more than one leaf sticking out of his black leather boots.

But then again, he could be a bandit hiding in the forest, waiting for some unsuspecting girl to “lead him home” because he was “lost” only for him to whisk her away to some cave and— _no, no, no, no, no._ She wasn’t going to think that while he was just lying there…

Oh.

He was just… _lying there._

Oh, yes, yes, he was breathing in spite of whatever broken state his brain must be in after her vicious attack, but the fact that he was _lying in the middle of her floor_ was problematic, to say the least.

She set the skillet on the coffee table—where Michael was _still_ sitting, absolutely dumbstruck with his little mouth hanging open and his wide eyes competing with the circumference of the saucers in the cupboard—and hesitantly reached out to grasp the material of his vest.

Michael squeaked in protest, and she threw him a furious glare.

“I can’t just leave him t-t-to _just lie here_ , can I?!” she hissed. “Daddy is still upstairs taking his nap. I have to hide this… _person_ before he wakes up and finds him himself. I still have to prove that I can handle myself out there, and _this one_ here will be my ticket to the world, Michael. Now either help me or _hush_.”

The chameleon sighed and then raised a foot, gesturing for her to continue. Rachel scowled at him, shifted her hair on her back, gripped the man’s broad, muscle-toned— _ahem._ She gripped his shoulders and tugged. He didn’t budge. She huffed in frustration, hooked her hand under his arms, braced her bare feet against the floor, and then pulled with all her might. Slowly but surely, she dragged the man’s dead weight across the floor and finally dropped him in front of the faded green wardrobe her father had been meaning to throw out.

“This will have to do for the time being,” she muttered. Then she bent down and studied the man’s face again, checking for any telltale twitches that meant he was beginning to come around. “I really, really hope you won’t be waking up any time soon.”

Then she yanked open the doors of the wardrobe and spent the  next fifteen minutes trying to figure out how in the world she was supposed to get this behemoth of a human being inside. She went through an entire series of maneuvers ranging from simply shoving him inside to swinging a length of her hair over one of the beams of the ceiling, attaching him to one end, and then _swinging_ him inside. Nothing worked until she finally tipped the wardrobe over onto its back, rolled him in, secured the doors so he couldn’t _fall_ his way out, and then used her hair as a pulley system to put it back upright.

She brushed her hands off with a self-satisfied smile and a nod. Michael just rolled his eyes at her, sighed, and shook his head, knowing full-well how easily things could spiral out of control.

When he turned back, however, he hadn’t realized just _how bad_ it could really get. Because Rachel was holding the man’s bag in one hand and a bejeweled tiara in the other. Her golden-brown eyes sparkled with the sunlight that rebounded off the diamonds, but she didn’t stand there in shock and awe of the crown. She just…frowned at it.

Frowned.

As if the thing was a mixture of an offensive gesture or because she simply couldn’t fathom as to why anything had to be so…

Rachel made a _tut-tut_ noise against the roof of her mouth and grimaced. “I can’t understand how people can be so gaudy.”

She twisted it around a few times before giving up and setting it aside on the table. She reached into the bag again and pulled out a sheaf of papers—two envelopes and a crumpled, folded sheet of parchment. Having been sealed with what looked to be a very important-looking official stamp, she tucked the envelopes under one arm and unfolded the parchment.

 _“As you two cretins owe me a life debt each,”_ she read aloud _,_ frowning at the elegant but harsh-looking script of the writer, _“I hereby charge you with this mission—”_

THUD.

Rachel gasped, stuffed the parchment, letters, and the gaudy jewelry back into the bag, and tossed it up behind the crown molding of the wardrobe, effectively hiding it from view. Grabbing the knitting basket at the same time she dove for the armchair, she managed to form the perfect picture of being hard at work just in time for Schue to reach the landing of the stairs.

“Afternoon, honey,” he said cheerfully, stretching his hands above his head before reaching out to stroke her hair as he passed behind her. “I hope you don’t mind me taking a nap so soon after I got back, but since I have to be leaving again soon, I needed—”

“O-Oh, no, it’s perfectly understandable, Daddy,” she assured him. “Traveling as far as you did, I would be surprised if you weren’t tired— _not_ that I’m implying you’re old. Because you’re not. You’re really… _spry_.”

He shot a curious look at the back of her head and raised an eyebrow before turning to his desk where it sat in a little nook. “All right then. I’ll be leaving in a couple of hours, so make a list of whatever you need now.”

Rachel bit her lip, her fingers pausing mid-pearl. Glancing at Michael out of the corner of her eye, she steeled herself _again_ and then said, “Actually, Daddy, I had a different idea.”

“What is it?” Schue asked, still rifling through some papers on his desk.

“Instead of making that list…how about I come with you?” she asked tentatively. Her eyes stared fixedly at the tip of her big toe, waiting for the explosion.

“What?” he asked quietly, _dangerously_.

She finally set her knitting on the cushion beside her and stood up, nervously smoothing out her dress as she faced her father. “I know what I want for my birthday tomorrow.”

He stared at her with narrowed eyes, his mouth set in a straight line. One hand sat on his hip while the other was formed into a fist, his knuckles resting on the varnished wood. “And what is that, Rachel?”

“I want to see the floating lights,” she answered, inserting as much confidence into her tone as she could. “I want to see the floating lights _with you_.”

She could already see the storm raging in his expression, and she had to cut him off before he exploded. She skirted around the armchair to come right up to him, her fingers twiddling nervously.

“Look, Daddy, I know you want to protect me, but it’s been _eighteen_ _years_. And think of it this way—you’ll still be able to watch over me. I’m not going off by myself,” she explained earnestly. “And it’s harmless—they’re just floating lights, right?”

Schue just frowned. “Rachel—what floating lights are you talking about?”

She smiled nervously before crossing the room and wrenching aside the drapes on either side of the fireplace, revealing the mural she’d made above the mantle—the night sky only with a stream of warm, golden lights across the midnight blue expanse.

“They’re not stars,” she said, smiling up at her work, “I know they’re not. They’re not stationary, so they simply just can’t be stars. They’re…floating lights. I don’t know what they’re for, but every year on my birthday, as soon as the sun sets, those lights start drifting off from some faraway place.”

“Honey, are you _sure_ those aren’t just…shooting stars or fireflies?” Schue asked. His strained tone completely flew over Rachel’s head, but Michael, ever the wary observer, immediately noticed.

**~oOo~**

The first thing Puck became aware of was the _fucking disturbing_ fact that his knees were digging into his forehead. By far, this was not the most compromising position he’d ever been in, but he was intelligent enough and familiar enough with the human anatomy to have a pretty good idea of the fact that one’s knees were supposed to be _nowhere near_ one’s forehead. 

After that painful realization, four other things decided to hit him at the exact same time. One: his tailbone hurt like a _motherfucker_ since he was cramped up in a U-shape in that dark, enclosed, little excuse of a space. Two: the elephant herd doing a tribal dance in his head was caused by what he vaguely remembered to be the bottom of a _skillet_ coming into contact with his face. Oh, his poor, _poor_ face. Three: the scratch on his wrist that he’d gotten from that spike outside was beginning to burn—burn like pressing a hand against the pot of a hot stew. And finally, four: a girl was talking outside of wherever the fuck he was.

He wasn’t exactly sure what he should deal with first—his position, his head, his scratch, or the girl. After a few small, sluggish movements, he realized his position couldn’t be helped. The space was too small to move anything more than his toes and arms. There really wasn’t much he could do about his head either unless he decided to end his own misery and try to break his own neck—which brought him back to the problem of low movement capabilities. And unless he would start sneezing out some ice and pulling a roll of bandages out of his ear, there wasn’t much he could do about his scratch either. Now the girl…well…. That explained the skillet. What self-respecting man would attack another man with a _skillet_? A woman, on the other hand… He figured she must’ve been in the kitchen and since she didn’t have a broom immediately in hand, she went with the pan.

Then he pulled his head out of his ass. There was a woman outside.

There was a _woman outside._

He opened his mouth to start making as much noise as possible when one last thing finally broke through the haze of unconsciousness.

His tongue was numb.

**~oOo~**

“No, Daddy,” Rachel insisted. “They are _floating lights_. Fireflies have more e-erratic movements and these lights aren’t _nearly_ as fast as shooting stars. I know what ‘floating’ means—”

“Then you should know that only happens in water.”

“—but these lights drift in the sky. They move slowly as if they _are_ underwater. They’re not stars, fireflies, or comets. I’ve watched them every year since I was little—I’m practically a-a-an _expert_ on them,” she said, gesturing emphatically, her eyes bright and wide. “But I need to know _more_. Where do they come from? What are they _really_? What are they _for_?”

“And you expect me to just let you go off and find that out for yourself?”

She laughed, brushing off his question. “Of course not! _You’re_ taking me there, remember? This is perfect! This is my-my chance to get out there into the world and really _see_ it for myself, and you won’t have to worry about me being attacked because you’ll be there too! It’s a compromise, Dad!”

But the dark expression on Schue’s face told her he was nothing if not _completely adverse_ to the idea. “I’ve told you a thousand times, Rachel.”

“But—”

“You _know_ how I feel about the world out there! Why would you think for even one second that I’d willingly _bring you with me_? That’s like me leading you straight into a monster’s den!”

“THIS ISN’T FAIR!” Rachel finally shrieked, her hands balled up into fists and shaking in her fury. “If you’re going to keep me here for the rest of my life like some _prisoner_ , then I may as well just start regressing into a-a-a-a _savage_ or a _barbarian_! What’s the point of being polite and obedient when it’s not going to get me _anywhere_  in life since I’m _stuck here_?!”

“How many times have we been _over this_?!” Schue roared.

“Not _nearly_ enough since it’s still not sinking in! You’re not _listening_ to me!”

“Are you sure it’s not the other way around?! Because I’ve spent the last _eighteen years_ trying to protect you, and I know—I _know_ —that the minute I let my guard down and let you out of this tower, something bad will happen!”

“Then stop being so pessimistic! It’s been eighteen years of no risks, no chances, no _living_! Is this honestly how Mom asked you to raise me?!”

“Don’t you bring your mother into this!” he roared, his face turning a luminous shade of scarlet. “This is _all_ because of her! I do what I have to do because of her!”

“You mean trapping your daughter in a _tower_ for the rest of her life is all her fault?! You mean thoroughly isolating her from humanity as a whole is all her fault?! You mean expecting a person to be _happy_ stuck in this tiny little space is _all her fault_?! How dare you?!”

“How dare _you_?! How _dare_ you talk about your mother as if you know everything about her circumstances?!”

“Oh, I _certainly_ dare because you absolutely refuse to talk about her—ever! All I have is a picture of a woman just _smiling_ benignly at a-a-a _river_ , and you expect me to be happy with that?! I’m not _stupid,_ Dad! I pay attention!”

“Not nearly enough apparently since I seem to repeating myself over and over!”

“I _know_ you’re still hurting over Mom’s death, but you don’t need to protect me all the time! I _know_ that her death was an accident, but I’m _sure_ that she wouldn’t want the both of us living like this!”

“You don’t know what she wanted!”

“Neither do you!”

**~oOo~**

Puck tried to wriggle a little bit to see if he could somehow shimmy himself into a less-backbreaking position, but it was no use. He couldn’t brace his feet against the side to at least alleviate the pressure because that meant digging his knees into his forehead _even more_. And now he was drooling all over the front of his clothes because his tongue was lolling out of his mouth.

He felt like a baby.

A big, fat baby in a crib made for tadpoles.

On top of _that_ , he wanted to fucking _cry_ ‘cause his scratch went from burning like he’d touched something hot to burning like the scratch itself was what was on fire. Then he wanted to cry some more ‘cause that last sentence didn’t make much sense. Then he wanted to cry even _more_ because of the fact that he wanted to cry _at all_.

And he just wouldn’t stop _drooling_. It was so fucking _gross._ He didn’t like the way his tongue was just…in his mouth because it was just right there between his teeth, and it just wouldn’t go back in. Like… He couldn’t pull it back! It was just _there_. He knew he was wriggling it, because he could feel it against his lips, and it was just such a gross feeling. But it was all he had for comfort because at least he could still _control_ it somewhat. He just couldn’t feel through is tongue, and he couldn’t pull it back into his mouth.

It was fucking _horrible_. He didn’t know what to do!

And the people outside just wouldn’t stop screaming about being locked in towers ‘cause apparently the chick’s dad wouldn’t let her out or some shit like that. And it was just so…

He was just having a really, really bad day.

**~oOo~**

“You called her a strong, capable woman, and you _know_ I’ve inherited some of that! I can protect myself out there, Daddy!” Rachel cried.

Schue snorted disdainfully. “Oh, really?! You’re _tiny_ , Rachel! You’re a tiny, little _girl_! The only monster you can protect yourself against is a _lizard_!” he retorted, throwing a hand out to the chameleon on the table.

Michael squeaked, thoroughly offended albeit somewhat mildly amused at the bright color of red Rachel’s face was turning into. He knew he shouldn’t be so entertained by this, but he’d been Rachel’s friend long enough to know Schue had this coming. This argument had been a long time coming, and he was satisfied that it was all finally coming to a head…and that he had a front-row seat to it as well.

“I’ve read self-defense books! I know how to swing a skillet!”

Then she flinched almost imperceptibly. That most definitely did not come out the way she’d intended.

“A _skillet_?!” Schue laughed in disbelief, holding his hands out to her as if presenting to some unseen audience exactly why she _shouldn’t_ be going out. “By all means—go fight a war with a _skillet_! How ‘bout we add a pot cover as your _shield_ and the pot itself as your trusty _helmet_!”

“Why are always fighting me with this?!” she demanded wearily, her eyes beginning to fill with frustrated tears. “Why can’t you just, _for once_ , let me take a step out of this place?! All I want is to see the lights! All I want is to go out there in the world with my father! You just keep leaving me behind and bringing back all these beautiful things expecting me to be okay with that! You can’t bring the whole world to me!”

“Well, I will have to since there is no way in _hell_ you’re going out there!”

“I can take care of myself!”

“No, you can’t!” Schue barked, raising a finger in her face.

“Yes, I can!” she shrieked right back, making her way to the wardrobe, fully intending on ripping open the doors and letting that man tumble out. Daddy would see then. He would see she was a fully capable young woman whom he could no longer keep cooped up in here. “And I can prove it!”

“No, you ca—”

_“Yes, I can!”_

“NO, YOU CAN’T!” Schue finally thundered loud enough to make Michael topple off his perch on the back of the armchair. “You _can’t_ because regardless of whatever you prove to me, _you are never leaving this tower!_ ”

She watched him—the man who’d raised her, bandaged her scratches, brushed her hair, sung her to sleep, fed her, clothed her, protected her, and loved her—and released the death grip she had on the handle of the wardrobe.

“Fine,” she said resignedly. The red quickly faded from her face and her tears dried before they even fell as she turned away and headed back to the armchair, where she picked up her needles and immediately resumed her knitting.

Schue continued standing there, mildly dumbstruck at how quickly she’d let the fight go. He turned his head to watch her, his breath heaving in anger and frustration. He thought he’d been clear, thought he’d been thorough, thought he’d done a good job so far.

Apparently, he was wrong.

**~oOo~**

_—_ andhis head _really, really, really hurt_ , okay? He was tired and hungry and sore and in pain and drowning in his own drool and he was just incredibly frustrated with his life, okay?

He didn’t sign up for this.

He didn’t sign up to a life of thievery with the anticipation of knees in his forehead and drool just _all over the place_. This is neither what he expected or wanted. All right, sure, he may or may not have had nightmares about something similar to this once he finally managed to cross some psycho who was dead-set on peeling his skin off his muscles and gouging out his muscles with a wooden spoon, but what made _this_ experience infinitely worse than his imagination was the fact that he was in this position because of a _girl_.

A girl.

A girl with a serious set of pipes judging by how loudly and shrilly she was screaming out there. The drooling stopped for a second as he smirked lecherously (though it didn’t quite have the standard fire since his tongue was still awkwardly and grossly hanging out of his mouth like he was some common mutt) at the thought of how else he could have her screaming in pleasure instead of anger.

But then he shook his head of his fantasies and came back to the fact that this was all because of a girl.

A girl who hit him with a skillet.

A girl who didn’t even attack him with a club, a sword, or even a butter knife.

No. She used a skillet. A _skillet_.

Frying pan.

Skillet.

Frying pan or skillet?

Was a skillet different from a frying pan? Both of them went on stoves, but was there a distinct characteristic that set them apart from each other or was it just as matter of nuance?

Was he even using that word correctly? Nuance? Was it nuance or semantics?

Why did he even _care_?!

And why in the name of all things holy was his boot beginning to _swirl_?

**~oOo~**

“Rachel—”

“I get it,” she said, barely above a whisper. “I _understand_ , Dad.”

Schue crossed the room to kneel in front of her, setting his hands on the arms of the chair to trap her in place. Still, she didn’t look at him.

“Rachel, honey, _please_. You’re _not_ understanding.”

“You really want to keep fighting?”

“I’m not trying to fight with you, sweetheart,” he insisted earnestly, leaned and ducking to try and catch her eye. “I’m trying to tell you that all I want in this world is to protect you. I’ve said it before, and I’ll go to my grave saying the exact same thing. My conscience will not let me allow you to leave because I’m so… _afraid of losing you_. I can’t. I can’t do it. And for as long as there a-a-are _criminals, murderers,_ and _thieves_ out there, I won’t do it. Please, you have to understand that. Even if I’m with you, I can’t guarantee your safety. I’m—I’m not strong enough.”

She finally pulled her eyes up to meet his, her face blank and empty. “I get it, Daddy.”

Schue sighed and leaned forward to cup her face in his hands before pulling himself up enough to press his lips against the top of her head. When he fell back down to his crouch, he rubbed the apple of her cheek with his thumb.

“Is there… _something else_ you want for your birthday?” he asked kindly. “Anything?”

She had the strongest urge to say “fighting lessons” but decided that wouldn’t go over so well. Then she decided on a suit of armor and some chain mail, but that wasn’t any better than her first idea—as appealing as they were. She petulantly debated between singing lessons and a horse. Then she sighed in defeat.

“That purple paint you brought me once before—the one made from a tree root and seashells?” she requested tentatively.

Schue flinched, and she knew it was because the paint was extremely hard to come by—a week’s trip and quite a few gold pieces. But he didn’t protest. In fact, he didn’t say anything. He just smiled sadly, kissed her forehead, and then walked back to his desk.

Rachel sat there, knitting as innocently as she possibly could even though every nucleus in her body was twitching in excitement, holding back the plans they’d been programmed with, while the rest of her cells were coiled in anticipation of what was going to come. Michael, who’d repositioned himself on the arm of her chair after the little tumble he’d taken at Schue’s outburst, stared at her with narrowed, suspicious eyes. He could almost feel the heavy atmosphere surrounding his human friend—which said a lot about Schue, who remained completely oblivious to his daughter’s tumultuous emotions that nearly soaked the room.

Before long, he’d donned his cloak, kissed her on the head, and hooked himself around Rachel’s hair to be lowered down to the ground. He blew a kiss at her from the ground, turned, and headed for the tunnel. As soon as he was gone, Rachel was trembling from head to toe.

With baited breath, Michael watched her cross the room, heading for the kitchen. She reached into the cupboard and pulled out that damned skillet, and practically _tiptoed_ to wardrobe.

She glanced at Michael who was nervously shuffling back and forth, eyes wider than Rachel ever thought was anatomically possible for any living creature.

“Should I do it?” she asked in a small voice.

Michael answered with a frantic shake of his head.

She bit her lip and grimaced. “But I can’t leave him in there—he’s gonna wake up soon.”

Michael heaved a sigh. Well, she may as well. Hopping down from his perch, he crawled his way across the floor and then up to her shoulder. Then he set his shoulders and nodded firmly.

Rachel took a deep breath, squeezed the skillet, and then reached out to grip the handle of the wardrobe. Before she could lose her nerve, she flung open the doors.

And there he was—huddled at the bottom at a painfully awkward angle, his front drenched in drool, and eyes—

EYES WIDE OPEN.

Rachel didn’t scream. She didn’t run away. She simply reacted on instinct…and smashed the skillet onto his head again. This time, she was fairly sure she’d killed him.

**Author's Note:**

> Oh, yeah, peoples, I went there. And I'm buying property. If I can't have Puckleberry in real life, I'm gonna take them Disney-style.  
> Now, this can function as a sequel for "Sour Patch Kid" since these are the same exact Pucklebabies from the epilogue, but it's still a standalone story. Tell me what you think! Any guesses as to who the other Gleeks will be portraying?  
> Now comes the inevitable: Who watched the finale? Because I didn't. My parents were home, and I didn't think me lying on the floor, incessantly weeping would over very well. How did it go? Any Puckleberry interaction? ANYTHING?


End file.
